The New(t) Possibility

crossposted from race42008

It’s time for a little bedtime story…

The year was 1994. I was then a young man of 16; full of ambition and determination, and it was then that I first met him.

Well, it sort of went that way…

Actually, my first meeting with Newt Gingrich came when I was to have lunch with him during my two years in Georgia (the two years I spent out of the state of Tennessee). Young and ambitious? Hardly. I was a perennial screw up; drunk stoned, and dethroned- to quote the Jesus & Mary Chain. However, along with a few others, my achievements athletically led to my being selected for this rare opportunity to share lunch with the newly minted “2nd most powerful man in America.” I was completely blown away by the Speaker. To this day, he is one of the most articulate people I have ever met. I’ve met him a couple of more times and have only nice things to say about Gingrich as a person. I don’t judge his morality. I do think he has numerous issues that would be nails in his coffin, but I don’t hold his admitted affairs against him.

First of all, I don’t think he is running unless he really does raise 30 million dollars. Why? Well, first of all, it’s highly unlikely that anyone could raise 30 million dollars in one month in the current state of the GOP, and Gingrich is potentially an even tougher sell. The party is to fractured and divided, and Gingrich is not blameless in this task. In 1994, the Republicans had completely demolished any hope of a future for the democrat party. However, the 1994 election was in many ways similar to the 2006 mid-term elections and the return of the Democrat majority. Many prominent democrat officeholders were under investigation for corruption; Bill Clinton was then considered a sure one term president, and the Republicans promised America a fresh start under a banner brilliantly titled the “Contract With America.” The GOP, without the presidency and no former president still calling the shots, were led by the Contract architect, Congressman Newt Gingrich. The promise to the American people was to clean up the mess. Gingrich campaigned for GOP challengers to democratic held seats, and his gamble paid off. The Republican Party was swept into control and there was a sense of revolution in the air. These were not the same old pork barrel politicians. There were new prominent, fresh faces; “young and ambitious” new congressmen like Joe Scarborough, Steve Largent, Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, Lindsay Graham, Mark Sanford, and J.C. Watts. The revolution didn’t stop in the House of Representatives, but spilled over into governors’ mansions and the Senate as well. We had new GOP governors like George Pataki of NY, Frank Keating of OK, Tom Ridge of PA, and most notably, George W. Bush of TX. In the Senate, the GOP now had fresh rising stars such as Bill Frist of TN, Jon Kyl of AZ, James Inhofe of OK, Rick Santorum of PA, and Fred Dalton Thompson of TN. These new lawmakers represented a bold change in Washington. It was the first time since 1918 that a party ran on a national platform and represented the ideals of smaller government and less federal spending. It specifically avoided social issues like abortion and school prayer, while focusing on smaller government, waste, and ultimately, reform. It was a brilliant strategy, and Clinton was surely the next target. However, things didn’t turn out they way 1994 predicted.

First, there was the resurgence of Bill Clinton’s popularity. Clinton handled a national tragedy (the Oklahoma bombing in 1995) with grace and his popularity began to recover. He relied greatly on his old advisor Dick Morris to rekindle his image and he succeeded. Morris, the apolitical, amoral strategist, advised Clinton to attack the republicans and Newt Gingrich on their cuts in areas like Medicare; an area Gingrich, who had come to believe that he was invincible, was trying to overhaul. It was a noble idea, but Gingrich was an idea man at heart, and Clinton ran circles around him repeatedly. Gingrich shut down the federal government after a stalemate over the Medicare budget. Clinton politically crippled Gingrich and Newt was forced to reopen the government, to the dismay of many of the class of 1994.

More and more of the original legislation of the contract was either compromised, abandoned, or defeated, like the term limits bill in 1994, which was to hold elected officials to term limits in the house and senate, authored by a freshman senator named Fred Thompson.

Clinton was back on his own turf, now free to work with the republicans. He won public victory after public victory, continuously handing Gingrich blow after blow. Gingrich said at the time, “I’m not a natural leader. I’m a natural intellectual gadfly.” By 1997, it was clear that many of the old guard who had remained in office were set in their ways, and there was little Gingrich could do about it. The class of 1994 ran as reformers, but they couldn’t fight the democrats and the holdovers of the GOP at the same time. By 1998, the revolution was over, though not officially dead until the 2004 midterm election. Gingrich was so weakened by 1998 that he couldn’t even lead the party during the Lewinsky scandal. By the end of that year, his own party forced him out of office. Originally, Bob Livingstone was picked to lead the party into the 2000 elections, but that idea fell through (for details, google it). Gingrich’s ultimate replacement was Dennis Hastert. Hastert, however, wasn’t the leader of the GOP. That designation went to Tom DeLay, and republicans know how he turned out. Ironically, if Dick Cheney had not been named Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush in 1989, it would’ve been him and not Gingrich that was first in line for Speaker and likely leadership of the party.

So what do I think of a possible Gingrich candidacy? I would welcome him to the race. Would I jump off the Thompson train to support Gingrich? No. If Thompson failed to last the primaries would I support Gingrich? It’s a possibility. It remains to be seen if he could survive the primaries without being a dead man walking. One of the biggest problems he has is that Hillary Clinton is cruising to the nomination. Gingrich wants to bring a new attitude to the race. I’m all for it, but I doubt the current candidates research teams would play nice with him. Think the press has had a field day scrutinizing Thompson’s every move? It would be that x 10 for Gingrich. Thompson is still playing catch up in organization, learning that you can’t do the virtual campaign without campaigning on foot like the rest of the candidates. Gingrich would undoubtedly have to build a national organization, facing the same problems that plagued Thompson over the summer. Gingrich is another ideas guy who would have to organize quickly, but unlike Thompson, doesn’t have eight months to do so. In the end, it’s really not fair to him. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, campaigns didn’t start until the November preceding the election year. In the last few elections, candidates have declared earlier and earlier, to the point of ridiculousness and leading to public burnout before the primaries have even begun.

Gingrich is a lot of things, but dumb is definitely not one of them. He has gone up against the Clinton’s before and been beaten, or make that badly beaten. The dirt sheets the democrats have on Gingrich are unprecedented. He spent six years being the most hated man by the democrat party during the Clinton era. For those of you who don’t remember the 1990’s or were too young, let me put it this way, Gingrich was roughly as polarizing then as Dick Cheney is today, and much of America still remembers the public image of him quietly crafted by Clinton advisor Dick Morris. Morris is thankfully irrelevant these days, but the damage his surgical dismantling caused Gingrich has not healed, and neither has the damage Gingrich brought upon himself with his own personal behavior.

So, do I think Gingrich will run? In the end, probably not. He has set himself an incredibly high bar of 30 million in one month. He knows it’s not likely, but if he achieved it, why not! Gingrich is admittedly no fan of the current debate process, and is now subject to the same criticism Thompson has been since he declared his candidacy. Do you think Romney and Giuliani will give him a pass when he’s not at the October debates? Of course not, we’ll hear that “Newt doesn’t want to debate the other candidates.” Gingrich’s likely motivation is still to control the agenda of the GOP platform. It is no secret that there have been meetings between Thompson and Gingrich over the summer, and Gingrich has said before that he was waiting on Thompson? When asked whether Gingrich was satisfied with Fred’s candidacy so far, he said, “some good and some bad.” So what is Gingrich waiting for? Well, we’ll find out soon enough, but the Thompson campaign knows. His upcoming stragegy (which race42008 was the second newssource to break, after the Weekly Standard) will be unveiled before the end of October. The punchline… “Where were you during the Revolution of 1994?” Gingrich’s strategy, one way or another, will again be a part of the debate, with or without its architect. It is possible that his flirtation with running is meant to push Thompson towards his political ideas quickly, or he may just be itching to jump back into the national race. Either way, I welcome him back to prominence and possibly the national spotlight. Before Thompson decided that he might run, I was leaning towards Gingrich, and I’m happy to have him involved as a candidate.

What does a possible Gingrich run mean to me as an unflinching Thompson supporter? He becomes my backup candidate, along with one or two others, who I would have no problem supporting if Thompson doesn’t succeed.